In worrying about the future, I despoil the present; in my escape, I leave a true freedom behind.
—Peter Matthiessen
Life begins before a soul is born and commences once again with the act of dying, and as in the Afro-Asian symbol of the snake of eternity swallowing its tail, all is in flux, all comes full circle, with no beginning and no end.
—Peter Matthiessen
In the mystical vision, the universe, its center, and its origins are simultaneous, all around us, all within us, and all One.
—Peter Matthiessen
The variety of life in nature can be compared to a vast library of unread books, and the plundering of nature is comparable to the random discarding of whole volumes without having opened them, and learned from them. Our critical dependence on the great variety of nature for the progress we have already made has been amply documented. Indifference to the loss of species is, in effect, indifference to the future, and therefore a shameful carelessness about our children.
—Peter Matthiessen
Topics: Wildlife
When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions — such as merit, such as past, present, and future — our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment.
—Peter Matthiessen
Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about the future and dwelling on the past. Zen practice is about appreciating your life in this moment. If you are truly aware of five minutes a day then you are doing pretty well. We are beset by both the future and the past and there is no reality apart from the here and now.
—Peter Matthiessen
The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.
—Peter Matthiessen
The insights and epigrams of Alexander Pope weren’t clich
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